Das Projekt "The Swiss contribution to the ICDP Lake Van Drilling Project: Linking modern seismic and biogeochemical signatures to 500,000 years of environmental history" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abwasserreinigung und Gewässerschutz, Abteilung Wasserressourcen und Trinkwasser durchgeführt. This SNF proposal seeks funding for the continuation of the Swiss contribution to the Lake Van Drilling Project executed by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP). Among other previous Swiss ICDP engagements, the Lake Van Drilling project was pivotal in triggering the newly established SNF-supported Swiss membership in ICDP. Further, the SNF Swiss contribution is a central building block of the entire ICDP PaleoVan initiative. Lake Van is the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world, extending 130 km WSW-ENE 1674 m above sea level on a high plateau in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. The lake is surrounded by active volcanoes within a tectonically active area and it is known to accumulate fluids emanating from the Earths mantle. The partly annually-laminated sedimentary record down to 220 m depth recovered from Lake Van during the ICDP PaleoVan drilling operations in 2010 has been shown to be an excellent palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironment archive. The continuous, high-resolution continental sequence, which covers several glacial-interglacial cycles (greater than 500 kyr), represents a unique possibility to investigate in detail the climatic, environmental, and volcanic changes that occurred in the Near East, the cradle of human civilization, during much of the Quaternary Period. Furthermore, the sediments contain an invaluable record of past earthquake activities, allowing the construction of a catalogue of prehistoric earthquakes and making it possible to study fluid transport in the continental crust that was triggered by seismic events. In this context, the societal vulnerability of the area to seismic hazards was dramatically documented by the occurrence of the devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.2 close to the city of Van on 23 October 2011 (hereafter referred to as the VE11 earthquake). This unfortunate and tragic event offers a unique opportunity to calibrate the past seismic events recorded in the sediments of Lake Van and the related emission of fluids from the solid earth to a modern seismic analogue. Sediment and fluid transport triggered by this major seismic event need to be quantified in order to calibrate the sedimentological record, which is targeted by the follow-up field campaign proposed within this project extension. The continuation of the Swiss initiative, embedded in the overarching ICDP drilling project on Lake Van, encompasses all the 5 initial research modules (A-E) of the ongoing SNF project (200021-124981). Within this proposal extension, the extended modules (A*-E*) will focus on key issues and new developments that expand the initial topics, with a special emphasis on the recent major earthquake VE11 and its biogeochemical and sedimentological implications. At the same time, this extension will also allow the results that have already been acquired to be further analysed and written up for publication by the project team. A large number of publications is foreseen. (...)
Das Projekt "BIOMASS: Natuerliche Vielfalt von Mikroorganismen in Gewaessersystemen" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Solvit durchgeführt. A total of 24 lakes sites will be selected along a North/South climate gradient (sensu TERI) from Norway to Spain and Northern Italy, incorporating also West/East gradient from Northern Ireland to the east of the Alps, to allow for differences between maritime and continental regions. These 24 sites will be sampled from two major defined study regions including - a north European group of 12 sites from Northern Ireland in the west to mid Norway in the east, including England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Denmark and Norway. This region will be the responsibility of UCL. - A south European group of 12 sites from western France and Spain through the pre-Alps and Alpine areas of Northern Italy, Switzerland and Austria to Slovenia and eastern Austria. The Swiss and Northern Italy regions will be the responsibility of EAWAG, the other sites will be the responsibility of UCL. Leading Questions: The final goal of the programme is to generate a model allowing a prognosis of microorganism diversity changes in relation to global changes. To achieve this, we will 1. assess the diversity of lipids in lakes and the impact of environmental change (e.g. eutrophication) on this diversity, 2. develop and quantify the significance of lipids as markers of microbial diversity in the water column and in the sediment of lakes, 3. compare the microbial diversity changes as determined by the analyses of lipids with available historical limnological data and, in the absence of such data, with changes inferred from paleolimnological (fossil remains of diatoms, ostracods and cladocera) and geochemical data (e.g. fossil pigments) 4. develop and refine analytical methods on the molecular level to explore the relation between microbial diversity and biodiversity of ecosystems.
Das Projekt "Mineralogische Umwandlung amorpher Eisensulfide in See-sedimente: ein potenzieller Stellvertreter-Indikator fuer den Klimawandel" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abwasserreinigung und Gewässerschutz, Wasserforschungs-Institut, Forschungszentrum für Limnologie durchgeführt. Precipitation of iron sulfides in sediments of deep lakes is linked to lake productivity and deep-water mixing. The concentration of iron sulfides in lake sediments may therefore contain information on the intensity of deep-water mixing, which is governed by climate variables such as wind speed and temperature. It is the goal of this project to make the geochemical information stored in iron sulfides in sediments more accessible for the reconstruction of past environmental conditions. Through an international collaboration with a group at the University of Grenoble the project will initiate a fundamental study of mineralogical transformations of iron sulfides in sediments. Synchrotron-based X-ray spectroscopy (EXAFS) offers new possibilities to obtain structural information from poorly cristallized samples. The method will be combined with in-situ analytical techniques to determine the sulfide record in different sedimentary environments (Lakes Baldegg and Lugano in Switzerland , Lake Baikal in Siberia and the Black Sea continental shelf). Leading Questions: The proposed study is focused on the following research goals: - To determine the local structure of amorphous iron sulfides derived from the reduction of different iron oxides and hydroxides by sulfide; - the apply this knowledge to the study of amorphous iron sulfides which prevail in lake sediments and to the crystal chemistry of intimately associated trace/minor elements; - to calibrate iron sulfides in sediments as a redox indicator of deep-water anoxia; - to apply this indicator for the reconstruction of aspects of continental climate variability in the last 10'000 years.
Das Projekt "High-resolution climate reconstructions from varved Arctic lakes: exploring the potential and limits of non-destructive analytical techniques" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Bern, Geographisches Institut, Gruppe für Klimatologie,Meteorologie durchgeführt. This project centered on the creation of a high-resolution climate reconstruction from Arctic lake sediments and investigation of the potential of high resolution scanning methods, in particular, reflectance spectroscopy. The most significant result was the development of a new approach to calibrate high-resolution biogeochemical measurements (e.g. reflectance spectroscopy or XRF scanning) by combining them with paleothermometer data (e.g. Alkenones or Tex86). This 'proxy-to-proxy' method is especially significant for the Arctic region where a 'calibration-in-time' technique cannot always be applied due to the short and sparse meteorological data network and the difficulties in precisely dating modern sediments. In this study scanning reflectance data from a lake in Western Greenland were calibrated using Alkenone data to create a new high-resolution 6000-year long temperature record. The resolution of the original temperature reconstruction was enhanced to resolve decadal to subdecadal changes, compared to an original multidecaldal to centennial resolution.